Richard Money is confident Cambridge United can get over their bout of Skrill Premier pain and get their promotion bid firmly back on track.

The U’s head coach read his players the riot act after the midweek defeat at Braintree, which made it five league games without a win, and he wants them to respond when they host Kidderminster tomorrow.

“I wasn’t surprised to see that performance, if I’m honest,” said Money. “I didn’t want to see it, I didn’t like watching it and neither did anybody else, but it didn’t surprise me and we have to make sure it was a one-off, and we have to snap out of it very quickly.

“The players know me well enough, I’ve said what I have to say, there will be no carry over from Tuesday night and hopefully there will be no carry over anywhere else because I said it and it needed saying.

“There’s a time and a place for everything. I don’t know what people think I do in the dressing room or how I am with the players, but I am ultra positive, I am ultra nice, I am ultra on their side.

“But every now and again they need one of those. They know that it’s coming and I think they knew it was coming on Tuesday night.

“I’m very confident there’s another good run in the team. We’re taking a bit of short-term pain at the minute and there are a lot of things to test us, but we’ve got to come through it and I’m sure we will.”

And Money said it is hard to put into words the mental fatigue suffered by the players in a period that has seen them reach the FA Trophy final while trying to keep on course for the play-offs.

“We looked jaded on Tuesday night,” said Money. “It’s not the playing the games, so much, it’s the mental thing. To get to Wembley is a big achievement for our players and for our football club.

“I understand all of that, but the mental side of it is the one that’s very difficult to assess. Call it excitement, euphoria, relief – what you have to go through to win two semi-finals to get to Wembley, and maybe play there for maybe the first and only time in your life is a big ordeal.

“The only distraction now is the final and things haven’t even kicked off yet. The club had to go to Wembley (yesterday) to toss up for dressing rooms, pick up tickets.

“The whole nonsense starts and we’ve got to win league games while that’s happening. If we don’t, we’re going to find ourselves in a very difficult position when the final’s finished.

“I’ll be as pleased as anyone and proud as anyone to walk out at Wembley with the team, but it can’t get in the way of what we’ve set out to do from the first day we came back in pre-season. At the minute it definitely has.”

Tom Elliott and Ashley Chambers will miss tomorrow’s game through illness, while Delano Sam-Yorke is set to return from his loan spell at Lincoln and Luke Allen has signed for Hemel Hempstead on a permanent deal.